Good evening, everybody.
I want to begin by thanking the people of Washington, D.C. for hosting
us, especially for putting up with more than 50 motorcades. And I will
make one promise to the people of this city -- I will not hold another
one of these summits in another six years.

I want to thank everyone
who participated in our meetings -- more than 50 leaders from every
region of the world and key international organizations. As at our
previous summits, we didn’t just come here to talk, but we came here to
act. I know that the very technical nature of nuclear security doesn’t
always make for flashy headlines. But over the past six years, we have
made significant, meaningful progress in securing the world’s nuclear
material so that it never falls into the hands of terrorists. And I
want to take a few moments to step back and lay out exactly what we have
accomplished.

Together, we have removed
the world’s most deadly materials from nuclear facilities around the
world. With Japan’s announcement today, we’ve now removed or secured
all the highly enriched uranium and plutonium from more than 50
facilities in 30 countries -- more than 3.8 tons, which is more than
enough to create 150 nuclear weapons. That's material than will never
fall into the hands of terrorists.

Fourteen nations and
Taiwan -- countries as diverse as Argentina and Chile, to Libya and
Turkey, to Serbia and Vietnam -- have now rid themselves entirely of
highly enriched uranium and plutonium. In particular, I want to point
out again that successfully removing all of Ukraine’s highly enriched
uranium four years ago meant that the very difficult situation in
Ukraine over the past two years was not made even more dangerous by the
presence of these materials.

As of today, South America
-- an entire continent -- is completely free of these dangerous
materials. When Poland completes its removal this year, central Europe
will be free of them as well. When Indonesia completes its work this
year, so will all of Southeast Asia. In other words, as terrorists and
criminal gangs and arms merchants look around for deadly ingredients for
a nuclear device, vast regions of the world are now off-limits. And
that is a remarkable achievement.

We’ve made important
progress in the United States as well. In addition to the new steps I
announced this morning, we’ve improved nuclear security and training.
We’ve consolidated nuclear materials at fewer facilities, eliminated
some 138 tons of our surplus highly enriched uranium -- which would be
enough for 5,500 nuclear weapons. Working with Russia, we’re on track
to eliminate enough Russian highly enriched uranium for about 20,000
nuclear weapons, which we are converting to electricity here in the
United States.

More specifically, as a
result of these summits, every single one of the more than 50 nations
represented here have taken concrete steps to enhance security at their
nuclear facilities and storage sites. And that includes improved
physical security, stronger regulations, abiding by international
guidelines, greater transparency, and that includes international peer
reviews. Fifteen new centers have been created around the world to
promote nuclear security technologies and training, to share best
practices. And as part of our work today, we agreed to keep
strengthening our nuclear facilities’ defenses against cyber-attacks.

We’ve bolstered
international efforts to disrupt nuclear smuggling. The Proliferation
Security Initiative has grown to more than 100 nations, including
regular exercises to improve our collective ability to interdict
shipments. The United States and 36 partner countries have worked to
install radiation detection equipment at more than 300 international
border crossings, airports and ports. And we are developing new mobile
detection systems as well. And finally, as I noted this morning, we’ve
strengthened the treaties and international partnerships that are a
foundation for so many of our efforts.

So, again, we have made
significant progress. And everyone involved in this work -- especially
our teams, who have worked tirelessly for years -- can take enormous
pride in our achievements. Nevertheless, as I said earlier, our work is
by no means finished. There’s still a great deal of nuclear and
radioactive material around the world that needs to be secured. Global
stocks of plutonium are growing. Nuclear arsenals are expanding in some
countries with more small, tactical nuclear weapons, which could be at
greater risk of theft. And as a consequence, one of the central goals
of this summit was how do we build on the work that has been done so
that we have an international architecture that can continue the
efforts, even though this is the last formal leaders’ summit.

So even as this is the
last of those leader-level summits, today we agreed to maintain a strong
architecture, including through the United Nations, the International
Atomic Energy Agency, and INTERPOL, to carry on this work and to provide
the resources and technical support that is needed to continue this
mission. And we are creating a new nuclear security contact group --
senior-level experts from more than 30 of our countries -- who will meet
regularly to preserve the networks of cooperation we’ve built, to
institutionalize this work, and to keep driving progress for years to
come.

At our session on ISIL
this afternoon, there was widespread agreement that defeating terrorist
groups like ISIL requires more information-sharing. Everybody
understands the urgency in the wake of what’s happened in Brussels and
Turkey, Pakistan, and so many other countries around the world. As a
consequence, our Director of National Intelligence, Jim Clapper, is
continuing to engage with intelligence leaders from a number of our
European partners on deepening our cooperation. And today, I invited
all the nations represented at this summit to join a broader discussion
among our intelligence and security services on how we can improve
information-sharing within and among our nations to prevent all manner
of terrorist attacks, especially those that might involve weapons of
mass destruction.

In closing, I just want to
say that preventing nuclear terrorism is one part of the broader agenda
that
I outlined seven years ago in Prague -- stopping the spread of
nuclear weapons and seeking a world without them. In recent days,
there’s been no shortage of analysis on whether we’ve achieved our
vision, and I’m the first to acknowledge the great deal of work that
remains -- from negotiating further reductions with Russia to dealing
with North Korea’s nuclear program.

As I indicated in Prague,
realizing our vision will not happen quickly, and it perhaps will not
happen in my lifetime. But we’ve begun. The United States and Russian
nuclear arsenals are on track to be the lowest that they have been in
six decades. I’ve reduced the number and role of nuclear weapons in our
nuclear security strategy. In a historic deal, we’ve prevented the
spread of nuclear weapons to Iran. An international fuel bank is being
built to promote civil nuclear cooperation.

So I’m extremely proud of
our record across the board. And we’re going to keep pushing forward
wherever we can, as I hope future administrations do, to bring us closer
to the day when these nuclear dangers no longer hang over the heads of
our children and our grandchildren.

With that, let me take a
few questions. And I’m going to start with Roberta Rampton of Reuters.

Question: Thank you. I want to
ask about Iran. And three weeks ago, Iran’s Supreme Leader complained
that his country has not been getting actual business deals since the
nuclear agreement. And non-U.S. companies are saying that it’s very
hard, or sometimes impossible, to do much business with Iran without at
some point accessing the U.S. financial system to do
U.S.-dollar-denominated transactions. So my question is, are you
considering allowing such transactions? And if so, is that not a
betrayal of your assurances that most U.S. sanctions would stay in
place?

President Obama: That’s
not actually the approach that we’re taking. So let me say broadly that
so long as Iran is carrying out its end of the bargain, we think it’s
important for the world community to carry out our end of the bargain.

They have, in fact, based
on the presentations that were made by the IAEA this morning to the
P5+1, have, in fact, followed the implementation steps that were laid
out. And as a consequence, sanctions related to their nuclear program
have been brought down. Part of the challenge that they face is that
companies haven’t been doing business there for a long time, and they
need to get comfortable with the prospects of this deal holding.

One of the things that
Secretary Lew and his counterparts within the P5+1 and elsewhere are
going to be doing is providing clarity to businesses about what
transactions are, in fact, allowed. And it’s going to take time over
the next several months for companies and their legal departments to
feel confident that, in fact, there may not be risks of liability if
they do business with Iran.

And so some of the
concerns that Iran has expressed we are going to work with them to
address. It is not necessary that we take the approach of them going
through dollar-denominated transactions. It is possible for them to
work through European financial institutions, as well. But there is
going to need to be continued clarification provided to businesses in
order to -- for deal flows to begin.

Now, what I would say is
also important is Iran’s own behavior in generating confidence that Iran
is a safe place to do business. In a deal like this, my first priority,
my first concern was making sure that we got their nuclear program
stopped, and material that they already had that would give them a very
short breakout capacity, that that was shipped out. That has happened.
And I always said that I could not promise that Iran would take
advantage of this opportunity and this window to reenter the
international community.

Iran, so far, has followed
the letter of the agreement. But the spirit of the agreement involves
Iran also sending signals to the world community and businesses that it
is not going to be engaging in a range of provocative actions that might
scare business off. When they launched ballistic missiles with slogans
calling for the destruction of Israel that makes businesses nervous.
There is some geopolitical risk that is heightened when they see that
taking place.

If Iran continues to ship
missiles to Hezbollah, that gets businesses nervous. And so part of
what I hope happens is we have a responsibility to provide clarity about
the rules that govern so that Iran can, in fact, benefit, the Iranian
people can benefit from an improved economic situation. But Iran has to
understand what every country in the world understands, which is
businesses want to go where they feel safe, where they don't see massive
controversy, where they can be confident that transactions are going to
operate normally. And that's an adjustment that Iran is going to have
to make as well.

And, frankly, within Iran,
I suspect there are different views. In the same way that there are
hardliners here in the United States who, even after we certify that
this deal is working, even after our intelligence teams, Israeli
intelligence teams say this has been a game-changer, are still opposed
to the deal on principle, there are hardliners inside of Iran who don't
want to see Iran open itself up to the broader world community and are
doing things to potentially undermine the deal.

And so those forces that
seek the benefits of the deal not just in narrow terms but more broadly,
we want to make sure that, over time, they're in a position to realize
those benefits.

David Nakamura.

Question: Thank you, Mr.
President. As you mentioned at the beginning of your remarks, you just
finished a working session with 50 world leaders about combatting
terrorism and groups like the Islamic State. And I wanted to ask you
specifically about one of the strategies, prime strategies your
administration is using in that effort. In the past several weeks, your
administration has killed well over 200 people in airstrikes in Somalia,
Libya, and Yemen, according to the Department of Defense. How can you
be certain that all the people killed posed an imminent threat to the
United States? And why is the United States now killing scores of
people at a time, rather than eliminating individuals in very targeted
strikes? Thank you.

President Obama: We have
constructed a fairly rigid and vigorous set of criteria for us
evaluating the intelligence that we receive about ISIL, where it might
be operating, where al Qaeda is operating. These guidelines involve a
whole range of agencies consulting extensively, and are then checked,
double-checked, triple-checked before kinetic actions are taken.

And for the most part, our
actions are directed at high-value targets in the countries that you
just described, outside of the theater of Iraq and Syria. In some
cases, what we're seeing are camps that after long periods of monitoring
becomes clear are involved in in directing plots that could do the
United States harm, or are supporting ISIL activities or al Qaeda
activities elsewhere in the world.

So, if after a long period
of observation, we are seeing that, in fact, explosive materials are
being loaded onto trucks, and individuals are engaging in training in
small arms, and there are some of those individuals who are identified
as couriers for ISIL or al Qaeda then, based on those evaluations, a
strike will be taken. But what we have been very cautious about is
making sure that we are not taking strikes in situations where, for
example, we think there is the presence of women or children, or if it
is in a normally populated area.

And recently we laid out
the criteria by which we're making these decisions. We declassified
many elements of this. We are going to be putting forward and trying to
institutionalize on a regular basis how we make these evaluations and
these analyses.

I think, in terms of the
broader debate that's taking place, David, I think there’s been in the
past legitimate criticism that the architecture, the legal architecture
around the use of drone strikes or other kinetic strikes wasn't as
precise as it should have been, and there's no doubt that civilians were
killed that shouldn't have been. I think that over the last several
years, we have worked very hard to avoid and prevent those kinds of
tragedies from taking place.

In situations of war, we
have to take responsibility when we're not acting appropriately, or
where we've just made mistakes even with the best of intentions. And
that's what we're going to continue to try to do. And what I can say
with great confidence is that our operating procedures are as rigorous
as they have ever been and that there is a constant evaluation of
precisely what we do.

Carol Lee.

Question: Thank you, Mr.
President. You've spent seven years now working on
nonproliferation issues, and you said in your opening remarks that you
hope that future administrations do the same and make it a priority.
This week, the Republican frontrunner to replace you said that perhaps
South Korea and Japan should have nuclear weapons, and wouldn't rule out
using nuclear weapons in Europe. Did that come up at this summit?
And just generally, what message does it send when a major-party
candidate is articulating such a reversal in U.S. foreign policy?
And also, who did you vote for in the Democratic primary?

President Obama: Well,
first of all, it's a secret ballot, isn't it, Carol?Okay. No, I'm not going to tell you now.

What do the statements you
mentioned tell us? They tell us that the person who made the statements
doesn't know much about foreign policy, or nuclear policy, or the Korean
Peninsula, or the world generally.

It came up on the
sidelines. I’ve said before that people pay attention to American
elections. What we do is really important to the rest of the world.
And even in those countries that are used to a carnival atmosphere in
their own politics want sobriety and clarity when it comes to U.S.
elections because they understand the President of the United States
needs to know what’s going on around the world and has to put in place
the kinds of policies that lead not only to our security and prosperity,
but will have an impact on everybody else’s security and prosperity.

Our alliance with Japan
and the Republic of Korea is one of the foundations, one of the
cornerstones of our presence in the Asia Pacific region. It has
underwritten the peace and prosperity of that region. It has been an
enormous buoy to American commerce and America influence. And it has
prevented the possibilities of a nuclear escalation and conflict between
countries that, in the past and throughout history, have been engaged in
hugely destructive conflicts and controversies.

So you don't mess with
that. It is an investment that rests on the sacrifices that our men and
women made back in World War II when they were fighting throughout the
Pacific. It is because of their sacrifices and the wisdom that American
foreign policymakers showed after World War II that we’ve been able to
avoid catastrophe in those regions. And we don't want somebody in the
Oval Office who doesn't recognize how important that is.

Andrew Beatty.

Question: Thank you, Mr.
President. Yesterday you met with President Erdogan of Turkey hours
after some fairly ugly scenes at the Brookings Institution. I was
wondering, do you consider him an authoritarian?

President Obama: Turkey
is a NATO ally. It is an extraordinarily important partner in our fight
against ISIL. It is a country with whom we have a long and strategic
relationship with. And President Erdogan is someone who I’ve dealt with
since I came into office, and in a whole range of areas, we’ve had a
productive partnership.

What is also true, and I
have expressed this to him directly, so it’s no secret that there are
some trends within Turkey that I’ve been troubled with. I am a strong
believer in freedom of the press. I'm a strong believer in freedom of
religion. I'm a strong believer in rule of law and democracy. And
there is no doubt that President Erdogan has repeatedly been elected
through a democratic process, but I think the approach that they've been
taking towards the press is one that could lead Turkey down a path that
would be very troubling.

And we are going to
continue to advise them -- and I've said to President Erdogan, remind
him that he came into office with a promise of democracy. And Turkey
has historically been a country in which deep Islamic faith has lived
side by side with modernity and an increasing openness. And that's the
legacy that he should pursue, rather than a strategy that involves
repression of information and shutting down democratic debate.

Having said that, I want
to emphasize the degree to which their cooperation has been critical on
a whole range of international and regional issues, and will continue to
be. And so as is true with a lot of our friends and partners, we work
with them, we cooperate with them. We are appreciative of their
efforts. And there are going to be some differences. And where there
are differences, we will say so. And that's what I've tried to do here.

I'll take one last
question. This young lady right there.

Question: Thank you,
President. Mr. President, what do you think --

President Obama: Where
are you from, by the way?

Question: I am from
Azerbaijan. How can Azerbaijan support in nuclear security issue?

President Obama: Well,
Azerbaijan, like many countries that participated, have already taken a
number of steps. And each country has put forward a national action
plan. There are some countries that had stockpiles of highly enriched
uranium that they agreed to get rid of. There are other countries that
have civilian nuclear facilities but don’t necessarily have the best
security practices, and so they have adopted better security practices.

There are countries that
could potentially be transit points for the smuggling of nuclear
materials, and so they've worked with us on border controls and
detection. And because of Azerbaijan's location, it's a critical
partner in this process.

I should point out, by the
way, that although the focus of these summits has been on securing
nuclear materials and making sure they don’t fall into the hands of
terrorists, the relationships, the information-sharing, the stitching
together of domestic law enforcement, international law enforcement,
intelligence, military agencies, both within countries and between
countries -- this set of relationships internationally will be useful
not just for nuclear material, but it is useful in preventing terrorism
generally. It's useful in identifying threats of chemical weapons or
biological weapons.

One of the clear messages
coming out of this summit and our experiences over the last seven years
is an increasing awareness that some of the most important threats that
we face are transnational threats. And so we are slowly developing a
web of relationships around the world that allow us to match and keep up
with the transnational organizations that all too often are involved in
terrorist activity, criminal activity, human trafficking, a whole range
of issues that can ultimately do our citizens harms. And seeing the
strengthening of these institutions I think will be one of the most
important legacies of this entire process.

Mark Landler, since you
had your hand up, I’ll call on you. One last question.

Question: Thank you, Mr.
President. I wanted to ask a question about nuclear policy. Through
these past seven years when you've pushed to rid the world of nuclear
materials and fissile material, the U.S. nuclear industry has actually
worked to improve miniaturization of warheads. And while it has not
developed new classes of cruise missiles or warheads, it’s worked to
improve the technology. And that's prompted some in China and Russia to
say, well, gee, we need to keep up. Are you concerned that the
technological advances in the United States have had the effect of sort
of undermining some of the progress you've made on the prevention side?

President Obama: I think
it’s a legitimate question, and I am concerned. Here’s the balance that
we’ve had to strike. We have a nuclear stockpile that we have to make
sure is safe and make sure is reliable.

And after the START II
Treaty that we entered into with Russia, we have brought down
significantly the number of weapons that are active. But we also have
to make sure that they're up to date; that their command and control
systems that might have been developed a while ago are up to snuff,
given all the technology that has changed since that time. And we have
to make sure that our deterrence continues to work.

And so even as we’ve
brought down the number of weapons that we have, I’ve wanted to make
sure that what we do retain functions -- that it is not subject to a
cyber intrusion; that there’s sufficient confidence in the system that
we don't create destabilizing activity.

My preference would be to
bring down further our nuclear arsenal. And after we completed START
II, I approached the Russians -- our team approached the Russians in
terms of looking at a next phase for arms reductions. Because Mr. Putin
came into power, or returned to his office as President, and because of
the vision that he’s been pursuing of emphasizing military might over
development inside of Russia and diversifying the economy, we have not
seen the kind of progress that I would have hoped for with Russia.

The good news is that the
possibilities of progress remain. We are abiding by START II. We're
seeing implementation. And although we are not likely to see further
reductions during my presidency, my hope is, is that we have built the
mechanisms and systems of verification and so forth that will allow us
to continue to reduce them in the future.

We do have to guard
against, in the interim, ramping up new and more deadly and more
effective systems that end up leading to a whole new escalation of the
arms race. And in our modernization plan, I’ve tried to strike the
proper balance, making sure that the triad and our systems work
properly, that they’re effective, but also to make sure that we are
leaving the door open to further reductions in the future.

But one of the challenges
that we’re going to have here is that it is very difficult to see huge
reductions in our nuclear arsenal unless the United States and Russia,
as the two largest possessors of nuclear weapons, are prepared to lead
the way. The other area where I think we’d need to see progress is
Pakistan and India, that subcontinent, making sure that as they develop
military doctrines, that they are not continually moving in the wrong
direction.

And we have to take a look
at the Korean Peninsula, because the DPRK, North Korea, is in a whole
different category and poses the most immediate set of concerns for all
of us, one that we are working internationally to focus on. And that’s
one of the reasons why we had the trilateral meeting with Japan and
Korea, and it was a major topic of discussion with President Xi, as
well.